Gadgets, Gizmos, and Apps for Sleep

An abundance of gadgets, gizmos, masks, apps, and more have flooded the marketplace with promises of delivering a better night’s sleep. Although the scientific evidence supporting many of these is mixed at best, we share a few in hopes of familiarizing you with the ways your patients may be monitoring their sleep . . . and some of the available data validating their use.

Sleep applications have become extremely popular and are among the most downloaded offerings for both Apple and Android. How accurately do these apps measure sleep? In a study comparing one smartphone app claiming to monitor sleep with the gold standard of polysomnography, sleep-wake detection was fairly accurate; but other measures of sleep including sleep latency, efficiency, and staging showed no correlation.

Over 10% of Americans report using wearable devices to measure activity and sleep. These typically use accelerometers and microphones to detect movement and sound and operate via proprietary algorithms. One systematic review of the validity and reliability of consumer-wearable activity trackers found that they tend to overestimate total sleep time and sleep efficiency and underestimate time spent awake after falling asleep, as compared with formal sleep studies. There have been no studies comparing reliability between devices.

The vast majority of Americans use some type of electronic devices within the hour before bedtime at least a few nights a week. Excessive light at night, and particularly that in the blue-green spectrum, has been shown to affect circadian timing and may reduce alertness the next morning. This free software, available for both Mac and PC, adjusts your computer’s display in accordance with your time zone: